After the Boston Tea Party, the British tightened their hold on the colonies even more, and soon passed the Intolerable Acts. These acts were designed to punish Massachusetts. They closed the Boston Port as additional punishment, which shut down almost all trade to and from Massachusetts. This greatly affected many colonies and angered them to the point of separation from Britain.
On September 5, 1774, more than fifty delegates gathered at Carpenters’ Hall in Philadelphia. Men from every colony except Georgia attended. Sessions of this congress, called the First Continental Congress, lasted for over a month. These men wrote their own statement of protest, The Declaration of Rights and Grievances. The colonists fully expected Britain to repeal the Intolerable Acts, but they did not.
On the night of April 18, 1775, British troops left Boston and began their march toward Lexington and Concord. They hoped to surprise the colonists, but didn’t, although eight died and ten more were wounded. Once they made their way to Concord, they destroyed all of the military supplies that they could find. But before they could destroy much, they were quickly scared away by the colonists